1. Introduction
One is tempted to think that our
food for thought comes virtually from the great commons known as the internet [
1,
2]. However, when we take a long view, the instant stroke of a keyboard pales in comparison to the centuries-old evolution of food cultivation, storage, and sustainable consumption not only of real food [
3], but also the generation and exchange of ideas, which have resulted in creative capital.
Food for thought is commonly understood as an idea or issue to ponder; dictionary.com traces the evolution of this metaphoric phrase, transferring the idea of digestion from the stomach to mulling something over in the mind, to the late 1800s [
4]. Ricoeur equated the symbol as a way to rise to thought or ‘food for thought’ [
5] (p. 196). In the context of this research, the vernacular architecture of the pre-industrial era agricultural built environment has almost dematerialized in its transition from the ancient era to the post-truth world to become mostly an imagined symbolic concept.
The symbology of the common threshing terrace (‘eira’) of a remote Portuguese mountain village can now be found in multiple spaces of the urban realm, as well as in a semi-public and semi-private community arts incubator in Albany, New York (USA). How did the concept of food for thought first develop and materialize? How has it evolved? And what are some of the expected ways it might be utilized in the future? These constitute the main research questions of this article.
The article’s purpose is to trace the evolution of the
food for thought concept and its associated elements via the BLC Framework (i.e., Building, Landscape, and Community) across the Atlantic Ocean. Central to the analysis is the evolution of granaries to barns, knowing that these built-up structures are unique examples of ingenious design and craftmanship which pair form and function together and have the potential to influence community development practices. In the context of industrial farming, once ubiquitous agricultural buildings may now be considered endangered elements of working landscapes. Growing historic preservation efforts have recognized their picturesque character dotting bucolic landscapes throughout the countryside and the saved structures may be responsible for augmenting their aesthetic and emotional values in what has been referred to as the ‘landscapes of heart and mind’ [
6].
Perhaps the most novel and significant contribution of the paper is the conjugation of more than three centuries of analysis, its territorial span, and the three unique elements of the BLC Framework. In particular, the explanation of how agricultural buildings have crossed the Atlantic Ocean and found new uses in the New World fills a gap in the existing literature on vernacular architecture and landscapes, which tends to either examine buildings and landscapes in Europe [
7] or the United States [
8], but not both simultaneously. The research relied mostly on qualitative methods, including visits to various vernacular architectural, built heritage, and community center sites since 2007 (fieldwork in Portugal, 2007; fieldwork in Buffalo, 2016); semi-structured interviews; literature and popular press reviews; and the discussion of lessons learned according to commons planning themes. The key finding is an up-to-date discussion of the
food for thought concept in two distinct geographical worlds and three-time eras (XIXth, XXth, and XXIth centuries), as well as a set of lessons learned according to a protest poem and a rock song, The Goose and The Fable of the Brown Ape, respectively.
The law locks up the man or woman |
Who steals a goose from off the common. |
But leaves the greater villain loose |
Who steals the common from the goose [9]. |
|
Farmer Emmerich went into his barn |
And found a cow suckling a serpent |
And a brown ape clanking a heavy chain |
Said Farmer Emmerich to the ape |
Never ask me to come into this barn again |
So Long Farewell So Long [10]. |
The paper is in five parts. Following this introduction, part one is the analytical mechanism with a background review of the evolution of the granary/barn building, its substantive theories, and emblematic geographical examples from across the Atlantic Ocean. Part two is the methodology and materials section. Part three provides some background on these three case study sets: set #1: Soajo and Lindoso in the Alto Minho region of Northern Portugal; set #2: the states of Connecticut and New York; and set #3: the Albany Barn in Albany, New York. Some of the background features under scrutiny include geographic location, relevance to the research study, unique features, basic statistics, conservation status, attention in professional practice, and scholarly literature. Part four is the comparative analysis and discussion of the case studies according to the BLC Framework. And finally, part five is the conclusion and implications section of the study.
3. Materials and Methods
This paper comprises an evolutive analysis of the three-pronged BLC Framework. It employs a time analysis of approximately three centuries to distinguish three distinct evolution phases: (i) the pre-industrial era, (ii) the industrial era, and (iii) the information-driven era. These three phases parallel rather nicely, with the three periods of landscape architecture considered earlier as being: traditional landscapes, the landscapes of the revolutions, and the post-modern new landscapes [
39]. Likely, accessibility, urbanization, globalization, and the impact of calamities have been different in each era and affected the nature and place of the changes experienced over time. This study also attempts to discuss a contrasting analysis of places in the ‘Old World’ (
Figure 2) and the ‘New World’ in the hopes of emphasizing the migration of livelihoods across the Atlantic Ocean between places at approximately the same latitude (see
Figure 3).
The research methods comprised
in loco visits to all case studies, desk research of barn characteristics in a multitude of US states, the comprehensive study of built environments endowed with valuable cultural heritage, the review of arts incubators, 6 semi-structured interviews with various stakeholders of an arts incubator in Albany, New York, in-depth reviews of specialized literature and newspaper articles, and discussion of the lessons learned according to a protest poem (The Goose) and the lyrics of a rock song by Nick Cave: ‘Fable of the Brown Ape.’ The semi-structured interviews in Albany took place in the context of an arts and culture workshop at the Basilica in the town of Hudson (Albany Barn founder)—the Basilica is a renovated XIXth century forge and foundry for steel railway wheels turned into a non-profit multidisciplinary arts center in 2010, please see [
40]; the teaching of a Community Development undergraduate course at the University at Albany in Fall 2017—
Figure 3 (Albany Barn executive director); and regular visits to the Discover Albany Visitors Center, Quackenbush Square, downtown. On the one hand, this qualitative research strategy is justified in terms of the combat nature of the poem, which I find appropriate to discuss the usurpation of the commons and the search for more effective commons governance principles and rules, under a Common Pool Resources (CPR) framework. On the other, the rock song serves as an attempt at finding better ways to co-exist in more equitable, fair, and just ways (e.g., pooling resources from multiple sources via public–private partnerships (PPP) and establishing graduating sanctions, such as claw-backs in the contractual relations metaphor, i.e., the brown ape’s heavy chain).
Figure 3.
World map (for illustration purposes; not to scale) depicting images of the ‘Old World’ with a (
a) stone granary in Portugal, (
b) a military fortification, and (
c) a National Park’s logo, and of the ‘New World’ with images of (
d), (
e) barns in Connecticut, (
f) the Albany Barn case study in Albany, New York, and (
g) the University at Albany uptown campus [
41].
Figure 3.
World map (for illustration purposes; not to scale) depicting images of the ‘Old World’ with a (
a) stone granary in Portugal, (
b) a military fortification, and (
c) a National Park’s logo, and of the ‘New World’ with images of (
d), (
e) barns in Connecticut, (
f) the Albany Barn case study in Albany, New York, and (
g) the University at Albany uptown campus [
41].
The
in loco method has been termed the “shoe leather” technique, an attempt at acquiring intimate, comprehensive, and meticulous knowledge of the phenomenon under study by literally going places, immersing oneself in the reality under study, talking to other participants, and searching for details and facts to reach a research design and implementation capable of eliminating rival explanations [
42]. The purpose of “shoe leather” research is not to replace statistical modelling, but it is ideal in situations where data are difficult to acquire and make sense of through other readily available means [
43].
All case studies were chosen based on the author’s familiarity with the selected sites, their cultural real and or perceived heritage value, rehab and conservation potential, and the sustainable entrepreneurial nature [
44] of the most recent case study in the capital region of upstate New York. It is important to disclaim that the units of analyses range from sites with high concentrations of historic vernacular granaries in two nearby localities in Northern Portugal (24 stone granaries in Soajo and 50 in Lindoso), two US northeastern states with a majority of XIXth and XXth century barns (around seventeen thousand in New York and eight thousand in Connecticut), some still in excellent state of conservation, to a rehabilitated arts incubator building inspired by barn tradition in Albany, New York.
The discussion of the evolution of barns in the United States is restricted to only Connecticut and New York because the main barn typology in these two states did not migrate beyond the Appalachian Mountain range to the Midwest region, as happened with the large Pennsylvania barn typology [
23]. While folklorists tend to study agricultural buildings as examples of material culture [
8]; here, I attempt to establish connections with other aspects of the recent history of governance and public policy approaches to managing places at the intersection of vernacular architecture, landscape ecology, and community development. In a way, this is an effort at responding to a call for rethinking local heritage through microcosmic research of global awareness and impact [
45]. This new interest in understanding the value of cultural landscapes surely emerged in Europe during the early 1980s and has more recently forced a reappraisal of countryside heritage [
46].
There is a renewed emphasis in understanding the value of rural landscapes. It was also recognized that ‘the cultural dimension of landscapes has been neither adequately studied nor considered “mainstream” in contemporary landscape ecology’ [
47]. Therefore, similarly to earlier arguments that buildings could be appropriate sources to trace the evolution of US agricultural policy history, and the potential in motivating change through sustainable design and behavior in the built environment [
23,
48], the goal of this study is to understand the evolution of the
food for thought concept and to extract lessons learned with broad applicability to public policy scenarios.
5. The Albany Barn
The concept for the Albany Barn arts incubator in Albany, New York (
Figure 8a–c) was initially inspired by the movement Rock2Rebuild, when following the 2004 South Asian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina (interview with Albany Barn founder), a group of local individuals fundraised an event to sponsor relief efforts [
56,
57]. Those who spearheaded the fundraising assembled some local and regional visual artists and musicians and together they organized a concert to raise money. The artists’ willingness to dedicate their talent to a good cause rapidly inspired others in Albany. In the words of the Albany Barn’s executive director, artists were passionate about doing something bigger than themselves, but they were typically unable to do this, because of the difficulty to pay rent and make a decent living while paying to work in a shared studio and work on their own artistic projects [
57] (p. F1).
Since its inception in 2014, the Albany Barn has served as ‘a place of stability for artists and the community’ [
56] (p. F1). According to the same source, the Albany Barn serves as a new community anchor for the whole Arbor Hill neighborhood [
56] (p. F1). It offers ‘a space and the tools for people to engage in a conversation about revitalization, to set goals, and to celebrate art and culture’ [
56] (p. F1). The Albany Barn involved the rehabilitation of a cultural heritage building (i.e., the former S. Joseph Academic School—
Figure 8c) on Swan Street in Albany’s Arbor Hill neighborhood [
61,
62]. This community economic development resulted from a partnership between the Albany Housing Authority and a private developer. This unusual venture is an example of an entrepreneurial real estate project that converted a public school into an arts incubator with potential spin-off effects beyond the site where it is located. A long history of demolishing neighborhoods to either house a government complex or its public infrastructure, such as highways and expressways, has left a toll on Albany’s residents [
63]. Therefore, rehabilitating buildings of historic significance seems to be a welcomed practice, not only by elected officials and real estate developers, but also by the community itself.
The Albany Barn was modelled on AS220 in Providence, Rhode Island; ‘a small collective of artists who found an abandoned warehouse building, took out a traditional mortgage and had a couple of anchor tenants on the ground floor’ [
64]. One of the main differences between the Albany Barn and AS220 seems to be the public–private partnership between the Albany Barn and the Albany Housing Authority. According to Holler, the name Albany Barn stands for the idea of ‘
raising a barn’, ‘the community coming together to raise a structure that ultimately benefits everyone, not just the folks who inhabit it’ [
64] (p. E2).
The urban intervention comprised the rehabilitation of an old form to enable new functions. School classrooms, offices, and a gym were converted into 22 apartments and approximately 17,000 square feet (1579 square meters) of space for work studios, rehearsal suites, performance space, a digital media center, retail space, and offices for the professional artist community [
65]. This twenty first century landscape urbanism approach entailed a new community center for the Arbor Hill neighborhood and a whole pilot project for the whole city of Albany—a place capable of leveraging the neighborhood’s assets, while helping to foster stronger and enduring connections across the mostly African American neighborhood. From a community perspective, artists reside and work near each other (interview with Albany Barn executive director, Fall 2017). This has high potential to generate and expand creative capital throughout the neighborhood and the metropolitan area. Examples of arts and culture initiatives at the Albany Barn have included activities by photographers, painters, musicians, illustrators, and actors. Two theatre companies also keep the arts incubator bustling. The Albany Barn also offers grant writing workshops, career and marketing coaching, and collaborative networking [
65] (p. D1). The Albany Barn was supported by a multitude of state and local sources, including the Capital Region Economic Development Council, the Empire State Development, New York State Homes and Community Renewal, the Albany Housing Authority, and the City of Albany.
6. Comparative Discussion
6.1. Building
The first criterion of the BLC Framework is Building. It basically operationalizes the vernacular architecture feature of the selected case studies. To understand the importance of a building typology, one must examine its location, construction, uses, form, function(s), internal organization, access, and relationship(s) with the adjacent exterior space. As explained above in the first generation, the location of the stone granaries in the two villages is on the edge of both localities. In most of the second-generation case studies, it is on the edge of most farms by the access road. And in the third-generation barn, it is on a local street, a block away from an East–West main street arterial road. These multiple locations (almost autonomous small mountainous villages’ edges, isolated farms’ access roads on fertile river valleys near patches of forest land, and in the first inner-ring residential suburb adjacent to downtown) partially explain how the construction materials capitalized on available resources, such as: granite stone (first generation), wood (second), and prefabricated bricks (third). The relatively low cost but also low durability of wood shows why it was the material of choice in relatively isolated farms near abundant forest resources. On the contrary, the toughness of stone and the high malleability of the use of prefab bricks demonstrate the initial intentions of those who designed and built the stone granaries in Portugal and the school building in Albany, New York, respectively.
The main uses, forms, and functions have evolved from the exclusive storage of cereals, and storage of various farm products (i.e., grain, fodder, and farm tools and instruments) and animal husbandry, to daily utilization, initially for teaching and learning, and later for artists’ co-habitation in live/work environments. This is emblematic of a form that follows function mantra in the first two generations, and the internal conversion of a sizable building to new uses in the third generation. The interior space of the main built-up structure under analysis evolved from an elevated and undivided ample space (first generation), and a ground level partitioned space, in some larger cases a two-story-high building (second generation), to a four story-high building with mixed private and common spaces.
Regarding the facility’s access (entrance and egress), this was limited to one elevated door with air vents but no windows (first generation), to multiple doors of variable sizes and locations, and almost none to a limited number of windows (mostly openings to be used as elevated doorways rather than to let sunshine in) (second generation), and a main doorway and side entrances likely to be used as service access (third generation).
Finally, the relationship(s) with the adjacent exterior space range from the structure’s placement in high places for ample solar insulation and easy air ventilation to facilitate the drying of cereal (first generation), to the complete separation from the farm estate building, but within relative proximity for easy access (i.e., insulation from animal noises and odors), to a relative central location within a first-ring suburban neighborhood. The vernacular culture of the case studies under analysis has been protected by a national park’s legislation in Portugal, public funds, and common interest coalitions. Professional networks have been created to help preserve the rich cultural patrimony of vernacular architecture specimens and their unique landscape settings [
66]. For instance, Historic Barns of Connecticut has been dedicated to the preservation of barns in the state since 2004. As of 2012, this organization had nominated 200 barns and conducted research capable of enabling future nominations to the State Register of Historic Places [
52].
6.2. Landscape
The second criterion of the BLC framework is Landscape. This criterion serves as a contextual variable to analyze the broader relationships between the natural and human-made worlds and the vernacular architecture of the built-up structure under analysis. Landscape was defined above as a conceptualization utilized to refer to a unit of observation and an analysis comprising natural and or human-made value and the characteristics and potential use of a site, field, area, neighborhood, city, or region.
It has been argued that a landscape modification gradient is helpful ‘to reflect on the increasing human influences on the structure and functioning of landscapes’ [
67] (p. 1149). A rural landscape’s main emphasis appears to be on sustainable agriculture and attempting to apply restorative justice to ancient production modes. Emergent agriculture is based on the philosophies of sustainability, local production, and small-scale farming [
68].
The elements of durable societies include environmental stewardship, social justice, economic viability, and ethical behavior. Critical principles of sustainable agriculture are the integration of biological and ecological processes and the minimization of the use of non-renewable inputs, while making productive use not only of farmer’s knowledge and skills, but also of people’s collective capacities to solve common agricultural problems.
The main landscape elements in the three generations presented above evolved from the central role of the common threshing floor, the farm fields themselves, and the most proximate town common as a place to market and exchange goods, to the arts incubator as one of the most recent places of neighborhood centrality and identification. The exclusive working landscape character of the first generation—albeit with a clear separation of agricultural production, cleaning and storage, and living quarters—gave place to a high degree of naturalness in the farmed fields, with cereal preparation and storage occurring partially inside or near each farm’s barn. The third generation is characterized by a hybrid urbanscape of creative cultural capital, which takes place in the live/work environments and co-working spaces of the Albany Barn facility.
With the transition from a mostly ‘public’ working landscape in the first generation and a rather ‘private’ working landscape in the second, the landscape urbanism emphasis evidences a return to functions traditionally found in the town common, such as those of a gathering place and a place of exchange, although now not in an open-air environment, but inside a building and only after being granted formal admission. The more urban setting of the third-generation vernacular architectonic structure creates adequate conditions for interactions among artists and between these and the community members who attend events at the arts incubator. This shows a distancing from the natural world so easily found in the first two generations toward a more urbanized context, celebrated no longer as idyllic livelihoods but as almost exclusively urban existences of dwelling and skill [
69].
6.3. Community
Finally, the third criterion of the BLC Framework is
Community. Community refers to the aggregate number of individuals in each of the two villages under analysis in the Portuguese case studies, the family and household of each farm in Connecticut and New York, and the totality of individuals who reside, work, own, visit, and operate the arts incubator in Albany. A set of lessons learned has been identified to achieve a balance between preservation and development: ‘Involve residents, find assets in local needs, transfer lessons rather than replicating other’s work, create opportunities for ownership, if it does not exist invent it, and balance culture and commerce’ [
25] (p. 28). Most of these community economic development strategies appear to also resonate with the third generation of vernacular architecture under analysis.
To recap, the first generation is bound together by a pre-industrial rudimentary economy of scale, where production and consumption occur near each other and reciprocal help is given in turns to accomplish rotating agricultural shores, albeit with high coordination of schedules to utilize the threshing floor’s common infrastructure. The depopulation of the remote villages in Portugal is creating a conundrum between habitation and tourism [
70]. The household community in the second generation possesses great freedom of schedule and of doing tasks at their own pace as production and exchange (selling and buying) occur in different places: the fields and the town common, respectively. In the third generation, residents of the arts incubator live relatively independent lives with relative freedom of schedule, which enables them to do their creative work either individually or collectively if they so wish. Nonetheless, they also require some coordination to jointly promote, sell, and or perform their artistic wares and creations. In fact, the selling of artistic goods and cultural performances tend to occur near each other to also optimize economies of scale.
It has also been argued that ‘it is both possible and preferable to advance an urban economic development strategy based on the local cultural assets that exist in urban neighborhoods’ [
25] (p. 28). And a four-pronged approach to historic preservation centered on ‘gauging, protecting, enhancing, and interfacing historic resources with community economic development and sustainability’ has also been suggested [
27] (p. 1). There is some evidence to validate both approaches in the case of the Albany Barn. In synthesis, community creative capital has been exchanged in the form of ideas and reciprocal labor on the threshing floor in the first generation; it has been transacted outside of the places of production in the second generation; and finally, it is displayed and or performed at the arts incubator.
7. Conclusions and Lessons Learned
This paper’s main goal was to trace the evolution of the food for thought concept and to discuss its Building, Landscape, and Community practices across the Atlantic Ocean. The research questions comprised a series of interrogations aimed at clarifying how the concept of food for thought first developed and materialized; how it evolved across the Atlantic Ocean; and what some of the expected ways it might be utilized in the future are likely to be. The first conclusion is that the third-generation vernacular architecture of the Albany Barn in upstate New York might very well have emerged out of the ancient pre-industrial self-secluded vernacular architectonic environments represented by the villages of Soajo and Lindoso in Northern Portugal. If any thought remains, an easier interpretation can be put forward by relying on the ‘food’ part of the ‘food for thought’ concept, which has travelled a long distance to influence our contemporary thoughts.
The three-pronged BLC Framework was utilized to analyze and discuss three hundred years of the evolutionary path of the notion of entrepreneurial work, where it occurs, and what its creative outcomes entail. In the first generation, land can be considered an endowment granted by the creator [
71]. Acquired knowledge based on accumulated experience then is utilized to cultivate it; the results have not only been food that can be eaten (e.g., grain, vegetables, etc.), but also
food for thought (i.e., ideas that can be turned into useful knowledge, artistic products, and cultural performances, which can be enjoyed by everybody). It was also demonstrated that the management of land resources, building structures, and personnel requires rules of engagement (e.g., how and when to use shared resources, property ownership entitlements, labor rules for personnel, and rules to coordinate the utilization of common infrastructure).
We ought to recognize that, ‘we need to reconnect culture with nature and unite people with place in theory and practice’ [
67] (p. 1149). On the one hand, the overabundance of land in the passage of the first to the second generation led to the privatization of a common resource and a reduction in collective creative capital, which resulted in exploitative practices deployed mostly to maximize profits. Agriculture in the New World has evolved dramatically from its early days of Native American indigenous cultivation techniques. Mechanization and industrialization brought forward farming and massive processing techniques, and now we are realizing that we have come full circle and need to revamp ancient and secular, less destructive, more humane, energy efficient, and more sustainable and ecological cultivation methods. It is believed that many agricultural practices can potentially also mitigate carbon emissions, such as grazing, land management, restoration of degraded lands, and substitution of fossil fuels by agricultural feedstock. This is recommended to rebalance farming to protect the production capacity and ecological characteristics of the land.
On the other hand, new construction outside of consolidated areas of cities partially led to the abandonment of housing in central neighborhoods and, in certain cases, to its subsequent and deliberate demolition, such as during the Federal Urban Renewal Program. The passage from the second to the third generation required investment capital, collaborations to rehabilitate cultural heritage, and marketing skills to attract tenants to the arts incubator. The loss of common creative capital experienced in the first transition was partially off-set in the return to the urbanscape environment. The loss of housing stock in core areas of cities due to both suburbanization to the countryside and demolition of existing structures has been partially off-set with urban renovation and rehabilitation programs, leading to such success stories as the Albany Barn.
There is, nonetheless, room for improvement in the strengthening of the connections between human creativity and the reduction in collective human impact on the planet, which causes damaging and irreversible climate change. This can be achieved via, for instance, zero-acreage farming, vertical farming, farm to table programs, and urban community garden cultivation [
72,
73,
74]. Also, the optimization of rural landscapes within a landscape governance planning framework ought to ensure the sensible utilization of fragile socio-economic and cultural livelihood systems of places still in their first generation (e.g., via place rewilding) and the establishment of farmland preservation programs in second generation places [
75]. There is evidence that this might be starting to occur in Connecticut as the number of farms in operation appears to have increased from 4191 in 2002 to 4916 in 2007 [
76] (p. 48). Furthermore, the cultural value of rural environments associated with first generation places ought to be as enhanced and nurtured by public authorities as those currently in their third generation (i.e., in exclusively urban settings). For instance, the need for conservation management of EU priority habitats after the collapse and abandonment of traditional pastoralism in mountain rangeland has also been defended recently [
77].
A limitation of this study is the small number of direct case studies utilized to deduct these conclusions. Furthermore, the lack of direct correspondence between the early English colonial settlers and those Portuguese who lived and still live in the Alto Minho region and likely never thought about emigrating to the United States might be another limitation. Nonetheless, there is evidence that the Dutch and Germans who migrated to the regions that later would become New York and Pennsylvania, respectively, also brought with them barn technology that needed to be adapted to the different territorial conditions in North America. As the author has never visited the English, Dutch, or German original barns overseas, his theoretical term of comparison is the model of the remote mountainous village in Alto Minho, which ‘may soon become a memorial for a vanished way of life’ [
22].
The key takeaway for the scientific community, as well as the general public, is an up-to-date discussion of the
food for thought concept in two distinct geographical worlds and three-time eras, as well as a set of lessons learned. These five lessons learned with implications for public policy appear rather sensible. The first two pertain to issues of procedural justice as encapsulated in the anonymous ‘The Goose’ poem, while the last three result from a discussion of selected verses in Nick Cave’s ‘Fable of the Brown Ape’ rock song. The combat poem arguments of ‘The Goose’ might bring some closure to first- and second-generation dilemmas already partially resolved with recourse to vernacular architecture and landscape theoretical constructs as some of the song lyrics appear factual, open-ended, and future-oriented, not necessarily in this order.
And geese will still a common lack |
Till they go and steal it back [78]. |
|
But the brown ape escaped |
And was heard to roam the ranges |
Clanking its heavy chain |
Down in the valley it sang to its friend |
Whom he may never see again [10] |
Lesson #1 ‘The law locks up the man or woman [w]ho steals a goose from off the common’: The vernacular architecture shows us that rodents, as well as people, were unable to reach the food without the help of some sort of staircase in the first generation. Similar certainty might be utilized to demonstrate the privatization of the North American commons, which occurred in the transition to the second generation. The jury might still be out on concerns as to whether democratically elected officials and their representatives negotiated appropriate community gains for the Capital Region of upstate New York in the third generation.
Lesson #2 ‘But leaves the greater villain loose’: Although rodents were prevented from stealing food, birds (likely with long beaks) who were able to fly away with small loads of food could technically still steal the cereal from the stone granary (first generation). The overabundance of land and especially the human pursuit of happiness (i.e., the maximization of profits) by most who migrated from the ‘Old World’ to the ‘New World’ could be the answer to the theft of the commons (second generation). Finally, the well-intentioned real estate developer who has recently launched a ‘sister’ barn in an adjacent city of the Capital Region of upstate New York appears to be pursuing a ‘well-oiled’ vernacular architecture operation [
79]. To optimize the rehabilitation of historic buildings, a proactive and predictive approach to inventorying and planning the rehabilitation of historic structures has also been defended [
80]. Cities could have a more proactive role in assembling those databases and making them available to not only to those with money to invest but to everybody in the community.
Lesson #3 ‘Never ask me to come into this barn again’: Not even virtually, one might say, in a post-COVID-19 pandemic age of personal protective equipment (PPE), face masks, social distancing, Zoom meetings, apps for food delivery, and the patenting of grains that have been in the public domain for millennia by private corporations, personal data harvesting, and pretty much online everything [
81].
Lesson #4 ‘And the ground soaked in the milk of human kindness’: In the transition from the first to the second generation, the well-intended public–private partnership (PPP) governance mechanism where the ‘public’ pays (i.e., with the sack and usurpation of native land and the public taxes paid by the majority of low- and middle-income groups) and the ‘private’ benefits (i.e., as in the ‘grow and multiply’ religious mantra) might well be a red flag to the tenants of the Albany Barn arts incubator in Albany and in the ‘sister’ arts incubator in Schenectady (i.e., artists be aware! Is the ‘greater villain’ still loose? [
82]). The political dilemma of rent recapture is, nonetheless, open for debate. ‘Left wing’ and ‘right wing’ advocates tend to propose different interpretations on how to go about recapturing rent profits [
78]. The former likely claim that taxes should be drawn from land, labor, and capital to pay for public services and to foster social equity by their redistribution. And the latter proponents hold that efficiency requires more wealth to remain in private hands, and that the government should only receive the minimum necessary provision of public services.
Lesson #5 ‘Down in the valley it sang to its friend whom he may never see again’: Is it rather opportune to ask for reparations and indemnities three centuries later? The answer might be that the ‘public’ pays… only and so long as contractual claw-backs are imposed on the thefts caused by the ‘greater villain’! This appears to be the most plausible arrangement to atone for the injustices suffered by the property dispossessed of this one planet we call home and who have not yet been able to partake in the prosperity generated by real food, let alone
food for thought. Networks of properly nurtured individuals ought to finally be able to conceive of a better vernacular architecture capable of sustaining integral landscapes [
20] for all and not only for the few who receive the crumbs from the creator’s table (also known as cereals from your barn).